Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with another V FOR VENDETTA interview, rounding out the trinity of interviews I've done on the movie, the first going back to my chat with Natalie Portman ("We love you, Natalie!") at Comic-Con last summer. My chat with co-creator David Lloyd went up a couple days ago to a bit of controversy. We go into some spoiler material and even though I warned about spoilers in the introduction and put a giant red spoiler tag on the story it seemed people weren't prepared for it. I'm sorry to those that got upset about that.
McTeigue and I go over some mild, mild spoilers below, but nothing as big as the Lloyd chat. I hope you enjoy.
JAMES MCTEIGUE: Where are you calling from?
QUINT: Austin. Austin, Texas.
JAMES MCTEIGUE: Austin, Texas. Very good.
QUINT: You ever been to Austin?
JAMES MCTEIGUE: I have not. You know, I've never made it down there for the festival (SXSW). I'd like to get down there at some point. I've heard very good things about it...
QUINT: So, I take it you're not coming out to South By Southwest with the movie then.
JAMES MCTEIGUE: No, I'm not because I've got to bring it to London, unfortunately. I have a bunch of press and it has its premiere in London around that same time, so I can't get out there, unfortunately.
QUINT: Well, next film then. If it plays South By or Butt-Numb-A-Thon again, like V did, then you'll have to come out with it.
JAMES MCTEIGUE: Yeah, it was good to show you guys that. Got a lot of positive response from you guys. Got out into the world on a very positive note, which I'm very appreciative of.
QUINT: Well, you won't find a better audience than the Butt-Numb-A-Thon audience. It's just full of hardcore movie lovers.
JAMES MCTEIGUE: I'd love to get down there for the Butt... How did you say it? Butt-Numb-A-Thon?
QUINT: You got it.
JAMES MCTEIGUE: (laughs) Sounds like an interesting experience, the back to back to back films. Reminds me of staying at University and seeing films like that.
QUINT: So, I guess before the publicists start getting pissed off that we're just sitting here bullshitting we should probably jump into it. Do you remember the very first time you picked up Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V books?
JAMES MCTEIGUE: Um, yeah. I mean, working on THE MATRIX stuff, I guess you can't help but be submerged in the world of the comic or the graphic novel. Probably for me, it was probably around the mid-'90s, around the time of THE MATRIX. When was that? '96/'97? I'd read a bunch of other Alan Moore stuff... For better or for worse, I guess probably for better, it (V) had kind of passed me by, so it was one of the ones that I came to a bit late. You know, I'd read WATCHMEN and FROM HELL and a couple of the other more recent ones and finally got around to V.
I also knew 'round about that time that The Boys (Wachowski Bros) had done a pass on a script on it. So, I guess it was 'round about that time.
QUINT: So, did you read their script first or the graphic novel?
JAMES MCTEIGUE: No, I read the comics first and I think to read the comic you can't help but to be struck, no matter when you pick that graphic novel up, at how prescient it is. I know people's political consciousness ebbs and flows and we've gone through another time when... you know, I think people's political consciousness are peaked at the moment. They're more interested. You know, when Alan Moore and David Lloyd wrote it, it was another of those times, it was on the back of the Thatcher period and they felt the need to say something. I think all those things come and go, you know?
QUINT: Well, it kind of struck me a bit when I saw it BNAT because when word got out that there were reshoots and the movie was being pushed back, I was expecting the movie to lose some of the more overt terrorist imagery, but instead I found a movie that seemed to be even more up to date with mentions of London bombings, etc.
JAMES MCTEIGUE: Well, the odd thing about that or the sort of crazy thing about that is that stuff that's in there I shot 2 months before the London bombings ever happened. Part of the reshooting stuff we did was mainly to flesh out Evey in the cells with V. I did a pass at it and then felt that it could be fleshed out a little more, but that stuff with the guy standing outside of the tube station... If you'd look at our production records you would see that was in May when I actually shot that stuff.
I think that's a fair call when people say, "Oh, they're reshooting... maybe it's because of the London bombings." You know, it was horrific. I was cutting at the time they happened. You can never condone anything like that.
So you know... I think the press put 2 and 2 together and made 5 when the actual reality was when all that stuff about the guy outside the tube station and the avian flu and all that stuff... that all comes from a script that comes from... I think the shooting script was finished in November 2004.
QUINT: That's crazy, but still the fact that the studio didn't pressure you into removing that kind of stuff from the movie is a pretty major deal in the Hollywood system these days, where the studios want to make everybody happy.
JAMES MCTEIGUE: Without it sounding hollow, you know, because some of these things kind of do... Warner Bros has been nothing less than 100% supportive, which is fantastic. I guess you look at their slate of films in the last little while I think for a big Hollywood studio they're willing to stick their neck out. Obviously, with the Wachowski's as producers and with Joel (Silver) as producer and me directing... we have a long history with those guys and they know that we're not going to do anything that isn't good, that we're going to make the best possible film that we can.
The great thing about the studio is they'll trust you with the material, so it was amazing. I didn't have any creative interference at all, which is pretty amazing for someone directing their first time out.
QUINT: I've loved the marketing campaign Warner Bros has put behind this movie. The posters are all beautiful and it just feels like they're embracing the political aspect of this and not pushing it to the side and trying to draw people in with the action bits.
JAMES MCTEIGUE: I think they recognized the quality in the material. I think it's a good script, I think it is a good allegory. There's a lot at the moment... you know, "Is it about Bush's America?" and all that kind of stuff. I say no to that. I say it's an allegory about all governments. It totally depends on what you take into the theater, what you're going to take out of the theater. Some people will see it about Great Britain, maybe if you see it in Australia you'll see it about John Howard's Australia.What I would say is it's about all governments at all times, you know, and the way that you should have a voice and it's perfectly fine to have a voice.
I can see why people will see it like that and that's fine, too, because the last thing I want to do is tell people how to think about it. I think, hopefully, that's one of the things the film does. It asks questions, doesn't give you the answers, but lets you think about things.
QUINT: So, backing up just a little bit, you were Assistant Director on the MATRIX flicks and you also worked on ATTACK OF THE CLONES. How did you make that lucky transition to directing, especially with something as high profile and as complex as V?
JAMES MCTEIGUE: I guess going through that whole MATRIX trilogy... and I guess one of the closer relationships with a director on a film set, besides with the DP, is the AD. Over the years I became friendly with The Boys and we would always be talking about different stuff, whether it was about comics or novels or film... I don't know, I think you end up building an innate kind of trust and when they're looking to have their hand in something, but not wanting to direct it because they've been doing THE MATRIX pretty much flat out for 10 years... V was a good thing to do.
Part of their genius is their trust in you. At the point when they said, "We want you to direct it" there was never any other discussions other than me going ahead and doing it. You know, yeah. I think they just trusted me. And yeah, it was a lucky break because the material is just incredible, amazing material. It had a decent budget. To get the complexity of the material on the screen it needed to have a certain budget. I think they knew that given my track record that I could probably handle something like that. Having a history in assistant directing... I did some very large films. You're responsible for the organizational end of that...
QUINT: Well, it's not a really surprising transition. It's not so much thought of in this way these days, but originally assistant director was meant as a kind of apprenticeship under a director and that you were expected to move on later to direct your own films.
JAMES MCTEIGUE: Yeah, that history started off in Europe. There have been a lot of great directors who assistant directed. Hitchcock and even John Woo if you get into the more modern realms. But yeah, I saw it as a progressive step. I guess people always like to pigeon-hole like that. You know, assistant director is maybe more right side of the brain than it is left side of the brain, but I guess I never really saw it like that.
QUINT: Was it always your ambition to direct?
JAMES MCTEIGUE: Yeah. It's funny the path that you end up on, I guess. When everyone goes to University, like if you go as a film major, you always think that you'll come out and you'll be a director, you know? (laughs) For some people it happens, but for the majority of people I think they end up doing other craftmanship roles within the film industry.
I enjoyed assistant directing and that's what I did for a long time. Then it just became almost apparent, you know, almost by osmosis that I was directing.
QUINT: When you got the job was there any hesitation on your part knowing that up to this point Alan Moore's work has been really butchered by the time it hits the screen. Was there any driving force within you to make one of the first real honest to god adaptations of Moore's stuff?
JAMES MCTEIGUE: Yeah, there was. You can't go into the work of Alan Moore and not be cognizant of the other films that have gone before you.
I guess the smart thing we did when The Boys did their draft of the script was to be careful and to be true to the intent and the ideas and the integrity of Alan Moore's work. You can't do a straight page by page rendition of the graphic novel. That's never going to work in cinema, but what you can do is be in a headspace where you're making a version of all those great ideas that he tried to put into that graphic novel. Every now and then you can do the homage parts to the graphic novel and just go, "You know, he did that for very good reasons." I tried to do that and hopefully with the script and me being aware of how great the graphic novel is and trying to make something that was true to it... I don't know whether Alan will ever see it, but hopefully it's something he might enjoy if he saw it.
QUINT: The graphic novel was pretty fresh in my mind when I saw the film at BNAT and the movie really struck me as being incredibly similar to the comic. Not quite SIN CITY similar, but certainly very true to the comic. It really did feel like I was watching that world through a different lens.
JAMES MCTEIGUE: Nice of you to say that. It's nice to get feedback like that.
QUINT: One of the reasons I think I took to the film was Hugo Weaving's work as V. Can you talk a little bit about what he brought to the character?
JAMES MCTEIGUE: A couple of things. The great thing about working with Hugo is I had worked with him even before THE MATRIX, I'd worked with him in Australia, so we know each other and have known each other for a long time. The thing about Hugo, besides the fact that he's a damn fine actor, is he has an amazing physicality in whatever he does and he has an amazing voice. I felt his voice really embodied, in my mind, how V should sound. We got to talking about it and he had some other really great ideas.
He was born in England and I think he was there since he was 11 or 12, so he could really tap into that rich kind of voice that V has. I think that also he understood the mask. He knew how to work with the mask and I guess he had the background. He had done the mask work when he was at drama school in Australia. I think he really quickly came to terms with how it could work and what he could do.
We made a decision really early on to go for the emotional take at all times. Instead of doing one take or two takes... I'm not going to loop his voice later, I wanted to go for the emotional take because I knew it'd be a way of getting into it when we did do the looping I could go, "Hey, Hugo. Remember what you did on take 4 or remember what you did on take 6..." I think that really helped the character as well because obviously a large part of it was looping. I think he's an amazing actor, actually. I guess it's a long way of saying I think he's an amazing actor. (laughs)
QUINT: That's another really interesting decision that I think really benefits the movie. Almost any other movie would have just decided to put a dude in the suit and just pay Hugo to come in and do the looping. To actually have him there it brings a little more to the character. You can feel Hugo's presence in the movie.
JAMES MCTEIGUE: Yeah, you can. I think for it to be real you needed somebody, you needed an actor under there that understood what the mask was doing and when you have that inanimate face... You know, you need to know how to tilt your head, you need to know how to get it into the right light, you need someone who can hit their marks. Because of the line of vision out of the mask, Hugo spent most of the time sort of looking at someone's stomach for most of it. He really kind of got a good sense of it.
I think having someone with the physicality of Hugo... it was a good decision. I'm really happy that that's the way it worked out in the end.
QUINT: I found the look of V to be surprisingly accurate to the comics. Was there any pressure to change his appearance at all?
JAMES MCTEIGUE: No, there wasn't any pressure. I went about subtly changing things, you know. I reduced the hat in size a little bit to give it a little... generally the hates that were back then in the 1600s were a little higher, a little more decorative, but I wanted him to come across a bit like an actual gunslinger, that's why I put the knives on the outside of V's suit. I streamlined the cape a little bit and put him in different boots.
Then with the mask, instead of laser-cutting it I got someone to do it out of clay, to mold it out of clay. To use a very tired and sort of cliched term, I wanted to make it organic and to feel a little more real, that you could feel that it was actually molded off of someone's face. I think that helped it, you know? Hopefully that really helped with the mask work.
QUINT: Can we talk a little bit about Adrian Biddle and his gorgeous work as cinematographer on the film?
JAMES MCTEIGUE: It was a really great experience. It's horrible that he'll never get to see it. You know, I went and had a look at the IMAX version of the film yesterday. You know, whereas it was really great to watch it, part of me was completely sad that Adrian would never get to see it in that format, to see his work up there. He's one of the greats. I think one of the first ever film he did was ALIENS, you know?
QUINT: Yeah, that's a bland looking movie right? No style to that one!
JAMES MCTEIGUE: (laughs) He also did THELMA AND LOUISE... You look at his career, it's eclectic. These films, each one of them stands alone and his imprint.
You know, the thing about Adrian is he comes to the table and he makes it look easy and, like, no fuss. There's this process now, digital intermediary process that a lot of films go through and, you know, more and more films go through as things become more digital. Right up to this film, which will obviously be Adrian's last film, he was still pushing the boundaries of that. He was curious about that and what that would mean to him as a lighting cameraman onset. You know, what you could light and how far you could take it again in the process.
So, yeah. He was a great guy to work with. It's a pity that he's passed away. Hopefully where ever he is, he'll be proud of the film.
QUINT: Before we start wrapping things up, I'd like to find out what are some of your other favorite comic properties. Are there any out there that would be dream adaptations for you?
JAMES MCTEIGUE: I guess, if I hadn't done V FOR VENDETTA, there is one on every comic book reader's shortlist, there's THE WATCHMEN. Not that I'd probably be the one to tackle that, but I'd love to see a film of that get made. I think having done an Alan Moore adaptation, it's time for me to do something else, but it'd be great if someone did that. I think whereas it would have been harder in the past, I think technology has caught up to be able to make that film. I think someone will have a go at it. I think Terry Gilliam had it for a long time and Paul Greengrass just tried to do it and there's that David Hayter script out there. I think someone will do it soon.
QUINT: Do you think if V is a hit that'll help get WATCHMEN made?
JAMES MCTEIGUE: Well, you know... Once upon a time, in some regards... even though there was BATMAN and SUPERMAN, people thought comics were the subculture and I think finally now they're not. They're the culture. That's what's out there. Even if you go into the gaming community, which is huge now. Everything references comics and graphic novels. I think there's no reason that WATCHMEN shouldn't get made. I just hope that however it gets done that they do it with a great script. That's always going to be the basis for whether something is good or bad, you know? You can never dress anything up in special effects unless you have the story there to back it up.
If there is a great script for that, that could be a really great film, I think.
QUINT: What's next for you?
JAMES MCTEIGUE: Yeah... Nothing I can tell you 100% at the moment, but I'm getting a bunch of good scripts across the table at the moment. Hopefully whatever I'll do will be the next logical step up from V. I was lucky to start out with a great script, surrounded by good people. You know you can do a lot worse than the Wachowski's and Joel Silver with you when you make the film. So, I had a good experience and I want to repeat the good experience! (laughs)
QUINT: What's your favorite dirty joke?
JAMES MCTEIGUE: Favorite dirty joke... wow. I haven't heard a dirty joke in a... You know, I guess in this particular climate, I kinda like what Jay Leno said... He said that he had just found out that the VP had shot someone while quail hunting, but what he didn't find out until later was that he had tortured him beforehand. That's my dirty joke for the moment seeing as I don't have a carnal one I can tell you.
Well, there you have it. Since I just found out I'm going to be at ShoWest next week, I hear I may be getting sit down time with a familiar face from V. My heart's all a flutter! So, keep an eye out for my ShoWest adventures! Hope you enjoyed the interview!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
